In his recent article “A tale of two futures: Techno-eschatology in the US and India” Robert argues that Western futurists and transhumanists have absorbed the apocalyptic eschatology of the religions through which they emerged. Indian religious eschatology is different, but it also has parallels with transhumanist thinking. Moreover, Indian futurists tend to embrace the tradition, appropriating science and technology in their affirmation of the past, more than their Western counterparts.

“As machines grow to superhuman intelligence, humanity will upload consciousness into machine bodies and join the artificial intelligences in what Moravec calls the Mind Fire, a cosmic expansion of intelligence throughout the universe,” explains Robert. Moravec’s Mind Fire could be able to resurrect the dead:

“Thanks to vast computation, even the dead shall rise and walk again in this digital wonderland, resurrected through historical analysis.”

Here’s how Moravec, one of the most visionary contemporary futurists, puts it in “Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind“:

“Minds intermediate between Sherlock Holmes and God will process clues in solar-system quantities to deduce and recreate the most microscopic details of preceding eras: Entire world histories, with all their living, feeling inhabitants, will be resurrected in cyberspace.”

Other contemporary scientists, notably Frank Tipler, have written extensively about the concept of technological resurrection.

I propose that the prospect of “Akashic Engineering” – a generic name for future technologies able to exploit the deep structure of physical reality to do “magic” in the sense of Clarke’s Third Law and even resurrect the dead – could be a much needed cultural fusion of East and West: Eastern ethereal spirituality and openness to holistic models of reality on the one hand, and the can-do engineering spirit of Western technology on the other hand.

In “Esoteric Buddhism,” available online as a free download), A.P. Sinnett was among the first Western writers to note that early Buddhism “held to a permanency of records in the Akâsa, and the potential capacity of man to read the same when he has evoluted to the stage of true individual enlightenment.” Then the concept of “Akashic Records” (ākāśa is a Sanskrit word for ether or space) was popularized in the West by Theosophy writers including Helena Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner.

A.P. Sinnett was (probably) thinking of spiritual rather than technological means to read the Akashic records. But we can switch to a Western engineering mindset and imagine technologies derived from future Akashic Physics.

I used to dislike the “Akashic” terminology for its associations with the occult, spiritism, and all that, but then I realized that the core concept of a permanent cosmic memory is equivalent to my favorite scientific speculations on future science and technologies able to scan the past and copy the dead to the future.

If the Akashic records exist, future science will permit reading them. Conversely, if future technology will permit scanning the past at high resolution, then there is a cosmic memory. We don’t necessarily have to call the cosmic memory “Akashic records” (there are equivalent terms that sound much more scientific), but doing so permit establishing links to ancient traditions and bridges to spiritual seekers, which in my opinion is good.

Many current scientific ideas can be described in Akashic terms. For example, if there are micro-wormholes connecting every space-time pixel to every other space-time pixel (ref. Clarke and Baxter), then we could read the (Akashic) records of other places and times. If we think of decoherence processes scattering apparently lost local information into the universe at large, then the traces left could be called Akashic records.

In Everett’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wave-function is local to the single branch of the multiverse that our senses perceive, and the apparently lost information is scattered to other branches. Therefore, information is preserved in Everett’s multiverse, which is a possible stage for Akashic physics. In “The Fabric of Reality,” physicist David Deutsch shows that other times are just special cases of other universes. Therefore, the apparently lost information – including the life events, memories, thoughts, and feelings of everyone who ever lived – are out there in the Akashic multiverse, and future scientists could search for – and find – ways to retrieve it.

Perhaps current quantum physics is not the last word. Top physicists have argued that future non-linear versions of quantum physics might allow for “magic” technologies. “Any attempt to generalize quantum mechanics by allowing small nonlinearities in the evolution of state vectors risks the introduction of instantaneous communication between separated observers,” notes Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg in his “Lectures on Quantum Mechanics.” The abstract of a paper by Joseph Polchinski reads: “Weinberg’s nonlinear quantum mechanics leads either to communication via Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations, or to communications between branches of the wave function.” According to Deutsch (see above), that includes communications across time.

The considerations above don’t prove that Akashic Engineering is feasible, but they do show that modern physics permits suspending disbelief and allowing ourselves to contemplate visions of hope and happiness, without abandoning the scientific worldview.

A new religion 2.0 (or an appropriate formulation of an existing religion, even Christianity) based on the prospect of Akashic Engineering could offer all the benefits of traditional religion, first and foremost hope in personal resurrection.

Of course it is possible (actually certain) that future scientists could find our first conceptual explorations of Akashic Engineering very incomplete, imprecise, and naive. But, though we can’t see the road ahead clearly, we see that it leads to an enchanted world. Robert has written of virtual worlds as means to provide the enchantment that the real world seems to have lost. However, I am more interested in the re-enchantment of the real world.

To give Robert plausible deniability and protect his academic credibility from accusations of associating with lunatics like me, I must say that Robert is interested in these things from the detached perspective of a scholar, but he isn’t a believer. “I’m agnostic leaning towards ‘atheist’ on such projects,” he told me. “I don’t believe in the Akashic records and I’m skeptical about resurrecting our ancestors.”

I will not try to “convert” Robert. Rather, I want to hear his thoughts and comments on my cultural / religious engineering project: A new religion 2.0 (or an appropriate formulation of an existing religion) based on the prospect of Akashic Engineering. What is the natural target audience? Is the East, and in particular India, a more fertile ground than the West? How to overcome the aversion of spiritual seekers to science and engineering? How to overcome the aversion of scientists and engineers to spirituality, including imaginative scientific ideas that “sound like religion”? How to present our ideas to the mainstream religion and science communities? How to position our ideas politically in academy and society? What are the more suitable organizational structures? What do you think of my open source religion idea? What are the most suitable outreach formats? Are virtual worlds still a good option? And many related questions…

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The precise information of events and beings long past is missing. Thus while it is possible to create extremely rich VRs and simulations, as rich as our own apparent universe, they cannot possibly be exact reproductions of situations, beings and events who information details are not available to us. Even if we accidentally got it right we cannot know it is right without that information. This should be obvious.

Giulio Prisco

It may seem obvious that Information about the daily life of people in prehistorical civilizations is not available to us. But on the contrary, as a matter of fact, archeologists deduce a surprising amount of information from the traces left by those people. The information is often rich enough to permit establishing an accurate narrative of prehistorical daily life.

That’s why technological resurrection is often called quantum archeology. It’s really archeology on steroids. The idea is to reconstruct the past from traces left in the fabric of reality.

You assume that “information details are not available to us.” I say that perhaps they are, and offer some ideas about where the missing information details could be found. My arguments are admittedly loose but, as far as I can see, scientifically plausible. What do you think of my points?

We have been discussing these things for years, and I have the impression that you are very passionate against the idea of technological resurrection. Why is it so? What is it that you want to protect?

spud100

I don’t know if this helps matters any? Here is a brief quote from Sabine Hassenfelder, from her Aeon article as blac holes eventuating into quantum computer.

er you die, your body’s atoms will disperse and find new venues, making their way into oceans, trees and other bodies. But according to the laws of quantum mechanics, all of the information about your body’s build and function will prevail. The relations between the atoms, the uncountable particulars that made you you, will remain forever preserved, albeit in unrecognisably scrambled form – lost in practice, but immortal in principle.

There is only one apparent exception to this reassuring concept: according to our current physical understanding, information cannot survive an encounter with a black hole…

Giulio Prisco

Well, not everyone agrees that “The relations between the atoms, the uncountable particulars that made you you, will remain forever preserved, albeit in unrecognisably scrambled form.”

But if it is so, then the theoretical possibility of unscrambling part of the information exists in principle, and perhaps (far) futur scientists will be clever enough to realize it in practice.

spud100

Well, as someone who has dealt with computer networks and communications, in your work experience, my question is, is the scrambling process akin to hashing of data, which renders it forever unreadable or is the natural processes something less assured?

Giulio Prisco

Well, I know that scrambled eggs are very difficult to unscramble. The question remains of whether unscrambling could be possible in-principle and achievable through (much) better tech.

Think of encryption: it scrambles the original data in ways that are extremely difficult (e.g. PGP) or impossible in-principle (e.g. one time pad encryption) to reverse. But you can reverse encryption if you have the key.

I just thoughts of two ways to unscramble eggs, which are conceptually related to unscrambling death.

1) Extract genetic material from scrambled eggs and use it to reconstruct intact eggs. Here there are identity issues (are the new eggs the same eggs?), but we can have criteria to determine whether the new eggs are sufficiently similar to the old eggs to be considered as the same.

2) Look back in time before the eggs were scrambled, make a very high resolution scan of the eggs (not necessarily atom-by-atom precise, just sufficiently precise according to the similarity criteria in 1, take the scan to the present, and use nanotech to make a copy of the eggs.

spud100

Very good analogies. I have searched in vain for a conjecture regarding the compression of data down to Planck cells, as a naturally occurring data file. I may be looking for the universe to be an analogue of a steam engine, or a bird in flight, which would highlight my failure, being a non-workable analogy?

Yet, I ponder the concept on Minkowski’s Light Cones, being photons, and thus possible data carriers. Data mine the light cones by some better science, and we have a basis for resurrection. This would meet your 2nd thought’s description, in principle. One can read up on many articles on the Holographic universe, but nothing ever specific about spacetime at the Planck Length, being a information storage field. Perhaps, wrongly, this is where I would target scientific inquiry.

spud100

Not to be annoying, but here is a youtube vid, by Johanan Raatz which sort of covers the issues that have been discussed for quite a while. I feel he, like Tipler had some good arguments, which I am reluctant to agree with, but nonetheless, I feel he provides material you might use? You will decide this for yourself.

As for these things and the meaning of life, my theory is that of the 11 dimensions three show Where (spacial), one or more show When (time) (forwards/backwards, sideways, up/down), and of the others there would be one or more showing Why, and one or more showing How. Who and What would factor in too. I messaged Amit Goswamai about this. What is needed is a mathematician who is one of the best at math to work on this I have figured instead of a physicist (to get the math part done)(I am bad at math but very good at science). Physicists would be needed too though. Thank you very very much to anyone who helps.. If there is an afterlife I think we would be composed of physical matter (here) too, just a different type of physical matter/energy but in the physical dimension; stuff around us would be made of the same energy/matter.. I think it would be made of “how” and/or “why”. I think that this might be what the bible means when it says that “the word” created everything that was created/visible.

Hacking religion, awakening technology

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